Josh Mack blogging at the intersection of technology and the liberal arts, and occasionally on; bicycles, politics, Brooklyn, parenting, crafts, and good reading. Currently helping to build a new NYC neighborhood news site - nearsay.com, that celebrates the voices that make our city. Subscribe to the daily newsletter it gives you what you need to know.

February 28, 2010

So what are you to do if you are media? First, you have to align your interest with marketers if you have any hope of still helping them, still adding and then recognizing value. Marketers will, as Bob Garfield so forcefully states in The Chaos Scenario, build their own, direct relationships around media, without advertising. Or as I’ve been obnoxiously stating it, advertising is failure — it’s what you do when you don’t have a valued relationship.

February 12, 2010

Can you even be a carpetbagger if you don't even file taxes in the state you are pretending to live in? Gawker doing some damming investigative reporting that combined with Colbert's interview might prove hard to overcome. Yet another example of why blogs + comedic news shows rule.

Via Kottke comes info about deckle edges, the imitation in modern books of what sliced pages would look like. Which makes me wonder just why the iPad -- with its faux bookshelf and its faux page turn isn't going all the way to having the user cut the edge of the virtual page with a virtual knife before being able to turn it.

February 08, 2010

First, this fellow is a senior in college. But it does bring back memories. Yep, we used to dress this way at Vassar too, sometimes we would even just wear pajamas under our pinnies. With those kind of ratios (60/40) really why bother? All kidding aside brilliant photo and caption, the NYT reading a bit like Gawker.

The cloying name should already set off alarms and the article only gets more disturbing. I can only imagine the fights when parents refuse to give their 11 years old money and force them to declare bankwuptcy and a life of bad kwedit ratings.

February 06, 2010

1. Set Goals: Contests are a great way to engage users, get customer feedback and even drive traffic to your site. Nevertheless, it's important to be realistic with your expectations and set specific goals. Some of the factors you can take into account to measure success include earned media, email opt-ins, engagement across social networks, monthly site traffic and in some cases, direct revenue.

2. Be Relevant: It would be silly to create a car contest for a community of cyclists or a meatloaf recipe contest for a community of vegetarians. One of Pickering's most successful contests is Adorama's Picture Perfect Contest. The contest invited community members to showcase the object of their passion - their photography. Pickering also suggests the barrier-to-entry was significantly reduced as participants had multiple ways to submit their work including via an iPhone app.

3. Give Them Incentive: In addition to prizes, Pickering suggests that community managers keep in mind the importance of recognition. By opening your contest to public voting, users receive public recognition and the community becomes more active in watching the competition unfold. Additionally, because Pickering's service offers integration with Twitter and Facebook, an open competition may encourage participation from those outside of the community.

4. Offer Support: Pickering points out that video contests may require some support. He suggests community managers consider setting up a blog, Twitter account and Facebook group to help answer questions and walk users through the process. In the case of New Zealand's Your Big Break Contest entrants were expected to submit a script and a short film. Tourism New Zealand set up a Facebook group to discuss the contest and by the time it was ready to launch, hundreds of filmmakers were poised to upload their submissions.

I don't think a paper that loses millions of dollars a year and funds itself by taking extortionary loans from plutocratic Mexican billionaires can be said to be competing in anything, Metro or otherwise. My feeling is you only get to congratulate yourself if you produce a great product and make money doing it— you don't get any points for doing just the first half. And that doesn't just go for you guys— I don't think any magazine or newspaper that supports itself by sucking on the teat of some old rich guy (or his heirs!) should be giving anyone else advice.

Specifically in local, I don't think the Times has had an original idea in years. It's got a metro staff of what, 60 reporters, and look at all this innovation: Cityroom, which is a fairly lazy and sleep-inducing ripoff of Gothamist, and The Local, a recently closed ripoff of Brownstoner. Five years ago The Times could have bought the best local blogs in New York for a song— instead, they decided they could do it better in-house, and completely surrendered the 20-40 year old demographic to sites like ours.